Brace yourselves friends because this is going to be a long one, but a good one. Just following my long-winded buddy Avi's lead ;)
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Brace yourselves friends because this is going to be a long one, but a good one. Just following my long-winded buddy Avi's lead ;)
Sometimes I am a real goofball about doing what I should and I get distracted, like this one night of a home-show in 2007. All of the experts at homeshows tell you that you need to stand upright, stay in your booth, and smile and wait for all the fish to bite. I'm a little too impatient for that and ended up walking away to talk to another person. As I was headed back to my booth from a few booths away I heard someone say, "Dad the hardwood guy is back." The person who had walked away came back and began to talk to me about his floors in a pretty frustrated manner. He had paid a major Home Depot chain to refinish his floors two years beforehand and they were shredded in no time. He also expressed his discontent at the dust levels despite their marketing promises.
In the end, what I indentified at the estimate a combination of factors that made the previous job a flop aside from dust. The homeowner had a maple floors and the previous people used a really high gloss poor quality finish on the floor. Given that the family is a big family, the combination of traffic made the floor look awful in a quick time period. High gloss showed everything and a poor quality finish applied really thin was no defense to a floor that sees 10-15 different visitors per day.
The client really wanted to remove the maple floors and put in flooring that was harder and more optically forgiving. One look around at the custom kitchen cabinets that were installed over the existing flooring and I knew that was a logistical nightmare. Also, the maple went into other parts of the house and he just wanted to change up things in the kitchen area. I proposed the idea of retrofitting a new floor by tearing out the majority of the maple and leaving a perimeter of maple to avoid cabinet issues and keep the rooms continuous in appearance. He liked the idea and before I knew it we agreed on a job and a price.
We decided on a six inch perimeter for the existing maple and the rest was to be 4" tigerwood with a ¾" Peruvian walnut feature strip separating the two woods. We went in with a combination of Festool track saws and routers and cut back the existing flooring and removed it. We used the existing floor (which now followed the cabinet curves) to form and bend strips for the curved feature strips. After letting the form pieces dry overnight we removed them and installed the main floor. We repeated the process of cutting into the tigerwood following the floor layout to create a ¾" channel for the feature strip. Afterwards we installed all the feature strips and sanded and finished the floor.
The timing of the floor ended up being a blessing because I was able to enter it into the NWFA Extreme Makeover contest that year and the entries would be judged at the Convention. I actually did not make it to the convention that year, but remember getting a text from my great friend Lon Vaughn that read "Congrats big dog, second place." I was pretty ecstatic to say the least. That seemed like the "big break" for me because my schedule still wasn't quite as full as I would have liked. It's all about the awards and glamour right? It seems that way when I talk to many friends who want to make tons of money on custom flooring, so I was sure my path to riches was paved.
I later entered the project into a local remodeling contest and also got an award. Winning locally meant that I would get a half page write-up in the Resource Guide distributed at our Homeshow. I was certain I was going to be on fire with inquiries for my work because of all the accolades. That home-show was in October of 2008, and just a few days later the banking industry collapsed. You know the rest because I am sure many of you have lived and learned through that time as well.
I spent the next six months greatly struggling with how to get business and make ends meet. The only business strategy I knew was "Do great work, show up on time, and the referrals will flow." That's a tired strategy and leads to more schedule inconsistency than I prefer. It is akin to building your business on a foundation of sand because you are relying on the perfect timing for people to remember and refer you and people forget A LOT. A chance encounter with an honest marketing expert led me to figure out a different approach: Having a big internet presence online backed with a solid online reputation. It seemed like a lot of work, but at that point I was willing to do anything to be able to pay the bills.
Here are the three most backwards and WRONG macho beliefs in our business.
Your skills will take you to the top. WRONG.
If nobody in your area knows how good you are, then you will spend a lifetime being an awesome craftsman and never becoming a great business owner.Most homeowners really are not that great at visually detecting the differences in sanding and installation quality between the top 30 percent of contractors in your area. It requires a delicate balance of marketing and sales language to illustrate your strengths without seeming like a cocky bastard.
Personal Referrals mean you will get the job. WRONG.
I can attest to plenty of times where our company was found online and we were "bid" against referred contractors and got the job. The deciding factors always come down to the customer's perception of professionalism and expertise. I have witnessed a very lax attitude of contractors who rely on referrals and then forget to present themselves well to customers. People are interested in how you can solve their problems, not how many awards you have accumulated.
Marketing is "dishonest." WRONG
Sure a lot of big brands and companies even in our business pitch promises that are absolutely a pile of crap. Phrases like "all natural," "organic," "green" etc… are just a few examples that make us reject the idea of participating in a marketing campaign because we do not want to be associated with being liars. Most of us got into this business to be honest hardworking people and feel internally rewarded at the end of the day.
There is a growing population of "researcher" customers who seek information in order to overcome misleading marketing. Aggregating your knowledge and honesty into a website, video, or print brochure is the form of marketing that will allow you to reach these customers. You will overcome the tide of false claims and marketing efforts of bigger companies that many contractors get so outraged about.THE MORAL OF THE STORY
I followed all three of the wrong beliefs that exist in the trades and nearly lost my house despite many nights of aching back and knees for my fairly priced work. The Battleground project on my website surely seemed like it was going to be the key for success because of the NWFA award. Projects like that are Cinderella stories compared to the needs of 95 percent of homeowners in the marketplace. Basing your efforts on finding the exclusive projects while ignoring the rest of the marketplace by not marketing to them is financial Russian roulette to say the least.
We really need to work together to undo the trends within our industry that place too many uneducated contractors into the mix with honest craftsman. Many honest craftsmen in this business are busy being infatuated with tools and stroking their ego on forums that the marketplace is slipping right by and leaving them scrambling to compete against the bottom feeders. If you made it this far in the post, then I'm guessing you may have learned how not to repeat my mistakes. Stay in touch and send me an email because I'd love to know your story.